3 months earlier, I had no Marketing cloud experience, I moved to an official Salesforce Marketing Cloud partner company, so this certification was on cards since then.

Even before I joined, I started my learning process. It took me 2 months to prepare for this certification as a complete newbie to Marketing Cloud. The exam wasn’t easy for me (though many say it is the easiest exam) as I didn’t have full-time hands-on experience of working on the Marketing Cloud project while attempting this certification.

Breakdown of Score

Before I talk about how I prepared for this certification here’s a breakdown of how much I scored on the exam.

Since we know the topics from the certification guide (column #1) and the % of weight for each topic (column #2), I calculated the expected number of questions for each topic (column #3) out of 60 questions. Salesforce sent my topic wise scoring via email that I secured after the exam (Column #4), so I calculated how many questions I got them right (column #5).

Topic

% of Weightage (from the guide)

Expected No. of Questions

My Exam Result in %

No. of Correct Answers

Content Creation and Email Delivery

18%

11

90.90%

10

Tracking and Reporting

6%

4

75.00%

3

Marketing Automation

19%

11

81.81%

9

Email Marketing Best Practices

15%

9

88.88%

8

Email Message Design

13%

8

37.50%

3

Subscriber Data and Management

29%

17

76.47%

13

60

46

In total, I got 46 answers correct out of 60 – that is 76.67%. Not bad. Pass!!

Topics & Weightage:The first thing is to get acquainted with the topics from the Salesforce certification guide and have an understanding of how many questions you’d get from each topic. As mentioned in the above table, there are 6 Topics.

Reporting & Tracking is the lowest – Just 6%. So around 4 questions.

Subscriber Data Management is the highest – 29% – 17 questions.

The remaining 4 topics are between 13% to 19% – around 10 questions per each topic

Content Creation and Email Delivery (18%)

Marketing Automation (19%)

Email Marketing Best Practices (15%)

Email Message Design (13%)

Trailhead: Obviously I started the preparation with Trailhead. There are only 3 modules for Marketing Cloud (MC). Reading and understanding these 3 modules from Trailhead covers 15-18%of your certification.

Marketing Cloud Basics: This gives the right intro to what this is all about. This doesn’t cover any certification topics but just gives a general idea of the cloud.

Marketing Cloud Studios & Builders: This gives an intro to the tools of MC. Focus on the Email Studio part. Do not go deep into the Journey builder but this is a must-read. There are a couple of introductory questions on why or when a Journey builder is used in the certification.

Email Marketing Strategies:The 3rd and the most important module This is very useful and covers the Email Marketing Best Practices topic of the certification (9-10 questions from this).

Update Feb 2018: 3 More Trailhead modules released for Marketing Cloud which helps in this certification

Official Salesforce Marketing Cloud Basics Youtube Playlist: Salesforce has an official Youtube channel specifically for Marketing Cloud, called “Marketing Cloud Official”. They have a special playlist named “Marketing Cloud Basics” where they talk about all the basics of Email Studio. This is very useful as the videos show the marketing cloud user interface while explaining all the features of the marketing cloud in detail. These are just 2-3 mins videos, 13 of them (to this day). So you should be able to complete them in an hour – This is fast-paced learning!

Read the Help Document:You can skip this step as this would not really help in certification directly at this stage. I preferred to do this as I wanted a deep knowledge and understanding of everything as eventually I know I’d work on MC. So, I chose the hard path. Salesforce provides help documentation for marketing cloud. Go to the “Getting Started with Email Studio” topic from the left menu in the help documentation. For the next 10 days, I read through all of this, yes the entire Email Studio documentation. Though not everything makes sense the first time, this will give you an idea of what’s in MC. I made notes for each topic, the things I feel are important to me. It didn’t help for the exam but from a learning perspective, it did.

Free Official Salesforce Online Training Courses: Salesforce provides free online training material. To get there, log in to your Developer Account (Not marketing cloud, your Sales cloud Developer account). If you don’t have a Developer account, you can sign-up here! This account is free for life. After logging in, go to Help (from upper right corner menu). Click on Training & Certification. And apply the filter ‘Marketing Cloud’. There are 9 courses available for free to study. These are some amazing content. (You can skip the Social Studio ones for this certification preparation.)

If you have a Marketing Cloud account, you can log in to your Marketing Cloud Account and go through Help (from top right corner menu, after logging in) and get to the Training courses.

Free APAC Certification Preparation Webinars:Salesforce University (okay now it is merged with Trailhead, so need to refer to it as Trailhead also) has started conducting free certification preparation webinars for everyone. This is an initiative from the Asia Pacific (APAC) team of Salesforce University Trailhead, so these webinar timings are more suited to the Asia time zone. These preparation webinars are not just for Marketing Cloud, they do for all other Salesforce cloud certifications including Sales Cloud, Service Cloud. These are 5-hour sessions and is quite interactive. The instructor takes you through the certification topics, explains each topic, with a live demo, giving you tips to clear the certification. This webinar is purely for certification purposes. You can register for the upcoming webinars using this link. I keep updating this link as soon as Salesforce releases the dates for the next webinars. I cannot share this material with you as this is Private & Confidential.

It is important to make notes during the webinar as you won’t have access to it later.

After the webinar, do a review of what topics you need to study more. Refer to the Help document and go through those topics.

By this stage, you would cover the entire certification topics and should be almost ready for the exam in the next 2 weeks. In the next 2 weeks you need to check mock exams and understand the question formats.

Sample questions from my exam:Are you ready for the exam? Let me check. I will list down the topics from which my questions were based on. If you think you can answer, you are ready. If not, don’t worry, just check the Help document to understand more on these topics (or write a comment on this post for any clarification).

Given a scenario, which one to use – Suppression List or Exclusion list?

Mock Tests:You can check for mock tests available on the internet. Don’t completely rely on them, as the question formats are not completely in line with what you get in your exam and most of the answers in the mock tests are wrong. So, I’m not giving any links here for mock tests.

Tutorial Series: I have created a tutorial series specifically for this certification explaining all the concepts of the Marketing Cloud.

Feel free to comment if any clarification required on any topic or any question from the mock tests, I will provide the right answer.

Maintenance of Certification Credential

To maintain your Marketing Cloud Certification, you no longer need to pay 100$ and take that online yearly maintenance exam. It has been shifted to Trailhead, yes! Learn how to maintain your credential

Guided Send uses send classification but allow to overwrite the sender profile and the delivery profile.
Test send does not use sender profile or send classification
Simple and Simple automated send does not use sender profile or send classification.

Q: NTO uses Automation Studio to automate many of its data transfer processes with MK Cloud. NTO imports daily its full audience to an All Audiences data extension. Due to upstream data integrity issues, it is possible the file to overwrite All Audiences with 0 (zero) subscribers. In this scenarios, NTO wants to be notified so it can reprocess upstream files.

How could NTO handle these uses cases?

A. Use Verification Activity following the Import to Stop Automation when All Audiences is equal to zero (0);
B. Use Verification Activity following the Import to Send Email Notification when All Audiences is equal to zero (0);
C. Use the Send Email Activity following the Import to send an email when All Audiences is equal to zero (0);
D. Use Notification Settings to send an email when the Automation incurs an Runtime Error or Skipped Run;

Answer should be B
Verification Activity sole purpose is to avoid unintended outcomes by verifying the data. Verification Activity can stop the automation or send you an email notification or both based on the conditions you define.

Northern Trail Outfitters (NTO) has been sending email for about 10 years. A new marketing manager noticed NTO’s deliverability continually decreased over the last year. NTO wants to grow its existing subscriber base and increase its ROI on email marketing by improving engagement with its subscribers.
Which three strategies will help improve NTO’s email deliverability? Choose 3 answers
A. Authenticate email sending to distinguish it from spammers.
B. Purge old or Inactive email addresses.
C. Ensure the spam complaint rate is between 1% and 3%.
D. Purchase lists from companies that guarantee users have opted In.
E. Encourage subscribers to add the company’s sending domain to their address books.

Hi All I came across a question. i wonder what could be the correct option. Please help.

Consumers like email marketing because it lets brands communicate to them as individuals with real-time offers that they want to receive. Identify the elements that make an email message effective? (Choose 4)
A. Optimize for Mobile
B. Data should always be relevant
C. Personalize email whenever possible D. Sharing isn’t just for social networks E. Send e-mail often to your customers F. Include your physical mailing address

A marketer needs to share report results with a manager. When using Reports in the Marketing Cloud, which option can be used to deliver the report to the manager? (Choose 3)
A) Save the report as a Snapshot
B) Save the report to an FTP folder
C) Print the report from Reports
D) Email the report
E) Include a link to the report in an email

NTO just hired a new associate who is brand new to email marketing to start creating and deploying the company’s monthly campaigns. NTO wants to ensure no mistakes are made.
Which to element of the send can be reviewed with Approvals?
A. Hyperlinks
B. From Name
C. Subject Line
D. Send Count

Northern Trail Outfitters (NTO) wants to ensure its emails are meeting subscriber expectations and enticing
engagement.
Which two best practices should NTO employ when sending email? Choose 2 answers
Send generic content to appeal to all audiences.
Send multiple emails a day to keep the brand top of mind.
Set cadence expectations up front with subscribers.
Use subscriber data to dynamically populate email content.

This is the repeated question however no one has given the concrete answer, can someone help?
NTO wants to send promotional holiday emails to subscribers who have identified their favourite store locations. Which two actions should NTO take in order to utilize their subscribers’ location preferences? Choose 2 answers
A. A dynamic From Name that pulls in the store location (Answer)
B. A new delivery profile that pulls in store location in the footer
C. A From Name for each store location
D. A new send classification for holiday promotions (Answer

NTO wants to resuse a skiing promotional advertisment used in one of last winter’s email campaigns. Which three methods in Content Builder can be used to locate the promotional advertisement? Choose 3 answers
Local folder structure

Do let me know what you think are the answers for each of the questions, instead of me just answering the questions. So that the learning is mutual. Yes, I will try to reply to all the questions anyways.

124. Northern Train Outfitters (NTO) specializes in delivering snack boxes to its members. NTO offers a 90-day trial on the snack boxes. NTO would like to send out a series of emails to educate and remind members to purchase the snack box subscription before the 90-day trial ends. Which tool is recommended for this scenario?
A. Automation Studio
B. Guided Send
C. Playbooks
D. Triggered Emails

Hi ,
While testing an email with dynamic content in Content Builder, proofs of five content variations need to be reviewed directly in the inbox of a marketer´s quality assurance specialist and the marketing manager. A data extension named “myTestData” contains only the variations needed.
Which method should be used to accomplish this task?
A. Create a Test data extension that contains the five content variations the two team members need to validate.
B. Enter the email addresses to receive proofs and then choose to send Based on Subscriber Preview “myTestData”.
C. Enter the email addresses to receive proofs and then select the specific records from a list or
data extension whose rendering should be sent.
D. Choose data extension of contacts and then choose to send "Based on Recipient Test Data Extension
My answer is B

NTO wants to send promotional holiday emails to subscribers who have identified their favorite store locations. Which two actions should NTO take in order to utilize their subscribers’ location preferences? Choose 2 answers
A. A dynamic From Name that pulls in the store location
B. A new delivery profile that pulls in store location in the footer
C. A From Name for each store location
D. A new send classification for holiday promotions
I think A and B

NTO will be using AMPScript to create highly personalized emails. As part of the quality assurance (QA) process, NTO needs to do the following:
– Ensure the system can process the AMPScript
– View the dynamic content variations based on data in the data extension
Which two Content Builder tools should be used in the QA process to meet these requirements? Choose 2 answers
A. Send Preview
B. Desktop View
C. Validation
D. Subscriber Preview
I think A and D

Hello everyone, first of all congratulations to those who passed the exam.
I still have some questions to clarify:

NTO uses HTML emails that have headers and footers coded into the email. What tool can the marketer use to control default headers and footers on email sends?
A. Dynamic Content
B. Sender Profile
C. Delivery Profile
D. AMPScript Lookups

I just wanted to thank you for all the good resources that you have here and for all the answers and questions reviews that you have in the comments section. I am a Salesforce employee, and this really helped me a lot! Yesterday I passed my MC email specialist exam in the very first attempt, so I am very happy!!!! Thanks again! 🙂

A subscriber unsubscribes upon receiving an email from Northern Trail Outfitters (NTO). At the bottom of the NTO email, the subscriber sees three links: Manage Subscriptions, Profile Center, and One-Click Unsubscribe.
The subscriber clicks One-Click Unsubscribe.
Given that NTO Is using the default subscription center, which two options are given when the subscriber clicks One-Click Unsubscribe?Choose 2 answers
A. Subscriber can choose to resubscrlbe to the list used for the send.
B. Subscriber can choose to be unsubscribed from all NTO publications.
C. Subscriber can choose which publications to unsubscribe from.
D. Subscriber can choose to be removed from the data extension.

This question has already been discussed but the correct answer is not clear to me:
A marketer needs to create an attribute named Gender that has a drop-down menu with appropriate values in the Profile Center. How can this be accomplished? (Choose 2)
A. Create restricted values
B. Select the attribute as required
C. Select the data type as Text
D. Set a custom maximum length of six

A marketer sends a re-engagement email to contacts who have not opened or clicked emails in the last month. This email contains a call-to-action (CTA) prompting the recipient to “Click here to keep receiving our emails.” In which two ways can the marketer determine who clicked on the CTA? Choose 2 answers
1.Select unique clicks on the overview tab in the inbox activity section
2.Select the click activity bar chart from the email overlay view of the click activity tab
3.Select the URL ID for the URL or tracking alias from the job links tab
4.Select the URL or tracking alias from the link view tab of the click activity tab

Hi Swati, the whole article is about how to start the preparation. If you are starting new into sfmc, 2 weeks is very less time to clear unless you dedicate the whole 2 weeks just for this cert, then its still possible.

Which two best practices should the customer follow to ensure marketers across the company are taking full advantage of Content Builder? Choose 2 answers
A. Create folders for each type of uploaded content
B. Import all content up front, rather than piece by piece
C. Optimize the way content is stored with a naming convention
D. Plan for content to be used cross-channel, eliminating duplicates

It says create folders for each ‘type’ of uploaded content. You need to create a folder structure that is campaign-based, rather than one based on the file type. SFMC allows you to anyways sort by type, so you don’t need a folder structure for ‘type’.

NTO wants to resuse a skiing promotional advertisment used in one of last winter’s email campaigns. Which three methods in Content Builder can be used to locate the promotional advertisement? Choose 3 answers
Local folder structure

can some one help on this question..
1.Tag filter:can search with promotional tag if provided in the email
5.local folder structure:can go to desired folder
2.Content Type filter:by selecting email as content type
Dont think so there is search on 3.Email Type
4.Search field — may be not accurate.

Q. Northern Trail Outfitters (NTO) needs to use a point-and-click tool to test segmentation rules and verify that the correct subscribers are included in the segment. NTO will need to automate the refreshing of the segment once it is tested.
Which two tools should be used to test and configure the segment?

NTO is looking at using Journey Builder rather than Automation Studio to send emails. What are the three benefits of using Journey Builder? Choose 3 answers
The ability to setup A/B/N tests as part of the workflow to conduct timing and creative tests

a.The ability to extract data from an Audience data extension for analysis

b.The ability to set goals and have the system listen to see if users met the goal

c.The ability to set criteria to segment contacts based on behavior using SQL